Welcome back

I’m sitting in the Chicago O’Hare airport as I write this. I just flew in from Flint, a short 45-minute flight, now connecting directly to Manchester. I bought one of my favorite magazines and now I’ve got about four hours until my flight departs. I can see my plane outside the window. It’s huge! It’s still such a wonder to me how they get such big pieces of metal with hundreds of people inside into the air…Sorry, I get distracted easily.

Anyway, I’ve decided to re-kindle this page again. No roaring fire, nah, just some twigs and small crackles. I’m thinking about taking a picture every day for the next 30 and posting them here. I don’t really have a theme, other than the fact that the photos will somehow revolve around my new life in England. Sometimes the photos will be junk, some, I’ll actually put work into. I don’t have my manual camera with here, and I don’t even have a nice digital camera. Just a regular little Canon Powershot, so don’t expect wonders. I’ll post a caption every day with the photo. The caption could either be a long story, or just a short sentence. Or just a word. I’m not yet sure how this will unfold. This is no academic project, to be sure. Just something to keep myself paced and measure the time. Besides, when the 30 days are up, I will have spent a month in England, which will be a pretty damn cool thing to say.

So, what about England?

I’m as prepared as I’m ever going to be. I’ve heard, however, numerous accounts about students getting depressed from a combination of being away from home and the dreary English weather. Someone told me that going fake tanning can help with depression, and I thought I remembered reading about a Russian office that had invested in a “happy room” for its employees, who were largely affected by depression due to the lack of sunlight in that particular area. The room was equipped with tanning beds, bright lights, aroma therapy, ocean sounds, and places to lay down and enjoy the foreign environment. I think that actually sounds like a great idea. As much information there is out there on the dangers of artificial tanning, I do love the smell of those places. That coconutty-vanilla-lime that just wafts out into the parking lot before you even hit the door. The warmth of the bed and those 10 minutes of mediation you get, smelling the coconut and probably soaking up a lot of bad radiation. Light therapy is real and has real results, so I figure, why not? Maybe this is something I could invest in this winter.

So when do I start? Well, I can’t start now, since I’m not sure about what my internet connection will look like when I get there, so I’ll start tomorrow or the next day. Post to come soon! Happy trails!